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What does the Bible declare about marriage?

The Arguments from Authority: The Bible and Church Tradition

3.2.1 Does the Bible support the contention that marriage must be limited to one man and one woman?

When public discourse first considered the possibility of giving legal protection to same-sex unions, most Christian communities were alarmed at this because they judged that the traditional ideal of marriage was under attack.  Dr. Andreas J. Kostenberger, a widely published Protestant theologian, took offense at the very fact that civil discourse was entertaining to give further recognition and protection to same-sex unions at a time when traditional marital unions were in decline.  Here are the words of Dr. Kostenberger explaining himself:

#1  Marriage and the family are institutions under siege today, and only a return to the biblical foundation of these God-given institutions will reverse the decline of marriage and the family in our culture today.

#2  In the book of Genesis, we read that God in the beginning created first a man (Adam) to exercise dominion over his creation and subsequently a woman (Eve) as the man’s “suitable helper” (Gen 2:18, 20). Then, the inspired writer remarks, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24 ESV). This verse sets forth the biblical pattern as it was instituted by God at the beginning: one man is united to one woman in matrimony, and the two form one new natural family.

#3  The Bible makes clear that, at the root, marriage and the family are not human conventions based merely on a temporary consensus and time-honored tradition. Instead, Scripture teaches that family was God’s idea and that marriage is a divine, not merely human, institution. The implication of this truth is significant indeed, for this means that humans are not free to renegotiate or redefine marriage and the family in any way they choose but that they are called to preserve and respect what has been divinely instituted ((https://www.frc.org/brochure/the-Bibles-teaching-on-marriage-and-family)).

Continue reading “What does the Bible declare about marriage?”

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Biblical Perspectives on Homosexuality

Biblical Perspectives on Homosexuality

by Walter Wink

Walter Wink is professor at Auburn Theological Seminary, New York City. He received his Th.D. from Union Theological Semianry, has been active in peace movements throughout the world, and is a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar. His books include: The Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millenium (1999), Homosexuality and Christian Faith (1999), and Cracking the Gnostic Code (1993).

This article appeared in the Christian Century November 7, 1979, p. 1082. Copyright by the Christian Century Foundation and used by permission. Current articles and subscription information can be found at www.christiancentury.org. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.

SUMMARY

There is no biblical sex ethic. The Bible knows only a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in a given country, culture or period. Despite ones revulsion against homosexuality, nevertheless, it appears, for some persons, to be the only natural form their sexuality takes.

No more divisive issue faces the churches of this country today than the question of ordaining homosexuals. Like the issue of slavery a century ago, it has the potential for splitting entire denominations. And like the issue of slavery, the argument revolves around the interpretation of Scripture. What does the Bible say about homosexuality, and how are we to apply it to this tormented question?

We may begin by excluding all references to Sodom in the Old and New Testaments, since the sin of the Sodomites was homosexual rape, carried out by heterosexuals intent on humiliating strangers by treating them “like women,” thus demasculinizing them. (This is also the case in a similar account in Judges 19-21.) Their brutal gang-rape has nothing to do with the problem of whether genuine love expressed between consenting persons of the same sex is legitimate or not. Likewise Deuteronomy 23:17-18 must be pruned from the list, since it most likely refers to a heterosexual “stud” involved in Canaanite fertility rites that have infiltrated Jewish worship; the King James Version inaccurately labeled him a “sodomite.”

Several other texts are ambiguous. It is not clear whether I Corinthians 6:9 and I Timothy 1:10 refer to the “passive” and “active” partners in homosexual relationships, or to homosexual and heterosexual male prostitutes. In short, it is unclear whether the issue is homosexuality alone, or promiscuity and “sex-for-hire.”

Unequivocal Condemnations

With these texts eliminated, we are left with three references, all of which unequivocally condemn homosexuality. Leviticus 18:22 states the principle:

“You [masculine] shall not lie-with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” The second (Lev. 20:13) adds the penalty: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.”

Such an act was regarded as an “abomination” for several reasons. The Hebrew prescientific understanding was that male semen contained the whole of nascent life. With no knowledge of eggs and ovulation, it was assumed that the woman provided only the incubating space. Hence the spilling of semen for any nonprocreative purpose — in coitus interruptus (Gen. 38:1-11), male homosexual acts or male masturbation — was considered tantamount to abortion or murder. (Female homosexual acts and masturbation were consequently not so seriously regarded.) One can appreciate how a tribe struggling to populate a country in which its people were outnumbered would value procreation highly, but such values are rendered questionable in a world facing total annihilation through overpopulation.

In addition, when a man acted like a woman sexually, male dignity was compromised. It was a degradation, not only in regard to himself, but for every other male. The patriarchalism of Hebrew culture shows its hand in the very formulation of the commandment, since no similar stricture was formulated to forbid homosexual acts between females. On top of that is the more universal repugnance heterosexuals tend to feel for acts and orientations foreign to them. (Left-handedness has evoked something of the same response in many cultures.)

Whatever the rationale for their formulation, however, the texts leave no room for maneuvering. Persons committing homosexual acts are to be executed. The meaning is clear: anyone who wishes to base his or her beliefs on the witness of the Old Testament must be completely consistent and demand the death penalty for everyone who performs homosexual acts. This was in fact the case until fairly recent times — hence the name “faggots,” which homosexuals earned while burning at the stake. Even though no tribunal is likely to execute homosexuals ever again, a shocking number of gays are murdered by “straights” every year in this country.

The third text is Romans 1:26-27, which, like Leviticus 18 and 20, unequivocally denounces homosexual behavior:

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

No doubt Paul was unaware of the distinction between sexual orientation, over which one has apparently very little choice, and sexual behavior. He apparently assumes that those whom he condemns are heterosexual, and are acting contrary to nature, “leaving,” “giving up,” or “exchanging” their regular sexual orientation for that which is foreign to them. Paul knew nothing of the modern psychosexual understanding of homosexuals as persons whose orientation is fixed early in life, persons for whom having heterosexual relations would be acting contrary to nature, “leaving,” “giving up” or “exchanging” their usual sexual orientation.

Likewise the relationships Paul describes are heavy with lust; they are not relationships of genuine same-sex love. Paul assumes that venereal disease is the divine punishment for homosexual behavior; we know it as a risk involved in promiscuity of every stripe, but would hesitate to label it a divine punishment, since not everyone who is promiscuous contracts it. And Paul believes that homosexuality is contrary to nature, whereas we have learned that it is manifested by a wide variety of species, especially (but not solely) under the pressure of overpopulation. It would appear then to be a quite natural mechanism for preserving species.

Other Practices

Nevertheless, the Bible quite clearly takes a negative view of homosexuality, in those few instances where it is mentioned at all. And the repugnance felt toward homosexuality was not just that it was deemed unnatural but also that it was considered unJewish, representing yet one more incursion of pagan civilization into Jewish life. But this conclusion does not solve the hermeneutical problem of our attitude toward homosexuality today. For there are other sexual attitudes, practices and restrictions which are normative in Scripture but which we no longer accept as normative:

  1. Nudity, the characteristic of paradise, was regarded in Judaism as reprehensible, even within the family (Lev. 18:6-19; Ezek. 22:10; II Sam. 6:20; 10:4; Isa. 20:2-4;- 47:3). For a son to look upon his father’s nudity was equivalent to a crime (Gen. 9:20-27). To a great extent this taboo probably even inhibited the practice of husbands and wives (this is still true of a surprising number of people reared in the Judeo-Christian taboo system). We may not be prepared for nude beaches, but are we prepared to regard nudity in the locker room or at the old swimming hole or in the home as an accursed sin?
  2. Old Testament law strictly forbids sexual intercourse during the seven days of the menstrual period (Lev. 18: 19; 15:18-24), and anyone who engaged in it was to be summarily executed (Lev. 18:29, though 15:24 contradicts this). Today many people on occasion have intercourse during menstruation and think nothing of it. Are they sinners?
  3. The Bible nowhere explicitly prohibits sexual relations between unmarried consenting adults — a discovery that caused John Calvin no little astonishment. The Song of Songs eulogizes a love affair between two unmarried persons, though even some scholars have conspired to cover up the fact with heavy layers of allegorical interpretation. For millennia the church has forbidden sex outside of marriage. Today many teen-agers, single adults, the widowed and the divorced are reverting to “biblical” practice, while others continue to believe that sexual intercourse belongs only within marriage. Which view is right?
  4. The Bible virtually lacks terms for the sexual organs, being content with such euphemisms as “foot” or “thigh” for the genitals, and using other euphemisms to describe coitus, such as “he knew her.” Today we regard such language as “puritanical” and contrary to a proper regard for the goodness of creation.
  5. Semen and menstrual blood rendered all who touched them unclean (Lev. 15:16-24). Intercourse rendered one unclean until sundown; menstruation rendered the woman unclean for seven days. Some people may still feel that uncleanness attaches to semen and menstrual blood, but most people who consider themselves “enlightened” regard these fluids as completely natural and only at times “messy, not “unclean.”

Adultery, Prostitution and Polygamy

  1. Social regulations regarding adultery, incest, rape and prostitution are, in the Old Testament, determined largely by considerations of the males’ property rights over women. Prostitution was considered quite natural and necessary as a safeguard of the virginity of the unmarried and the property rights of husbands (Gen. 38:12-19; Josh. 2:1-7). A man was not guilty of sin for visiting a prostitute, though the prostitute herself was regarded as a sinner. Even Paul must appeal to reason in attacking prostitution (I Cor. 6:12-20); he cannot lump it in the category of adultery (vs. 9). Today we are moving, with great social turbulence and at a high but necessary cost, toward a more equitable set of social arrangements in which women are no longer regarded as the chattel of men; love, fidelity and mutual respect replace property rights and concern to reduce competition between related males for the same woman. We have, as yet, made very little progress in changing the double standard in regard to prostitution. As the moral ground shifts, will moral positions remain the same?
  2. The punishment for adultery was death by stoning for both the man and the woman (Deut. 22:22), but here adultery is defined by the marital status of the woman. A married man who has intercourse with an unmarried woman is not an adulterer — again, the double standard. And a bride who is found not to be a virgin is to be stoned to death (Deut. 22:13-21), but male virginity at marriage is never even mentioned. Today some Christians argue that the development of contraceptives makes even the social prohibition against extramarital intercourse passé — which is to say, they are prepared to extend to women the privileges which the Old Testament freely accords to men. Others, who believe that sexual intercourse requires a monogamous context for true love to flourish, would nonetheless be aghast at the idea of stoning those who disagree.
  3. Polygamy was regularly practiced in the Old Testament. It goes unmentioned in the New — unless, as many scholars now believe, I Timothy 3:2, 12 and Titus 1:6 mean, as the Greek plainly reads, that bishops and deacons should have only one wife, referring not to divorce and remarriage (surely a widowed and remarried bishop was not disallowed) but to polygamy. If so, polygamy was still being practiced in the early church but was beginning to be discouraged. We know from the Mishnah and the Talmud that polygamy continued to be practiced sporadically within Judaism for centuries following the New Testament period. Christian missionaries to Africa in past centuries were ruthless in demanding that tribal chieftains divorce all but one wife, with tragic consequences for the ones rejected. Now many wonder whether some other arrangement might have been more humane, even if it included tolerance of polygamy in at least the first generation of believers.

No Longer Binding

A form of polygamy was the levirate marriage. When a married man in Israel died childless, his brother was supposed to marry the widow and sire children for his deceased brother. Jesus mentions this custom without criticism (Matt. 22:23-33). Today not even devout Jews observe this unambiguous commandment (Deut. 25:5-10).

In the New Testament, Paul taught that it was best not to marry (I Cor. 7). While he qualifies this as his own advice and not a commandment of the Lord, it is clearly advice that most Christians choose to ignore. And here and elsewhere, in explicitly authoritative teaching, Scripture teaches patriarchal, male-dominant marital relationships as the norm. Do we wish to perpetuate that teaching?

Jews were supposed to practice endogamy — that is, marriage within the 12 tribes of Israel. Until recently a similar rule prevailed in the American south, in laws against interracial marriage (miscegenation). We have witnessed, within our own lifetimes, the legal battle to nullify state laws against miscegenation and the gradual change in social attitudes toward toleration and even acceptance of interracial couples in public. Sexual mores can alter quite radically even in a single lifetime.

The Old Testament regarded celibacy as abnormal (Jeremiah’s divinely commanded celibacy is a sign of doom for the families of Israel [Jer. 16: 1-4]), and I Timothy 4:1-3 calls compulsory celibacy a heresy. Yet the Catholic Church has made it normative for priests and nuns.

In many other ways we have developed different norms from those explicitly laid down by the Bible: “When men fight with one another and the wife of the one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of him who is beating him, and puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts [i.e., testicles], then you shall cut off her hand” (Deut. 25:11 f.). We, on the contrary, might very, well applaud her. And just as we no longer countenance slavery, which both Old and New Testaments regarded as normal, so we also no longer countenance the use of female slaves, concubines and captives as sexual toys or breeding machines by their male owners, which Leviticus 19:20 f., II Samuel 5:13 and Numbers 31:17-20 permitted — and as many American slave owners did slightly over 100 years ago.

The Problem of Authority

These cases are relevant to our attitude toward the authority of Scripture. Clearly we regard certain things, especially in the Old Testament, as no longer binding. Other things we regard as binding, including legislation in the Old Testament that is not mentioned at all in the New. What is the principle of selection here? Most of us would regard as taboo intercourse with animals, incest, rape, adultery, prostitution, polygamy, levirate marriage and concubinage — even though the Old Testament permits the last four and the New Testament is silent regarding most of them.

How do we make judgments that these should be taboo, however? There exist no simply biblical grounds, for as I have tried to show, in other respects many of us would clearly reject biblical attitudes and practices regarding nudity, intercourse during menstruation, prudery about speaking of the sexual organs and act, the “uncleanness” of semen and menstrual blood, endogamy, levirate marriage, and social regulations based on the assumption that women are sexual properties subject to men. Obviously many of our choices in these matters are arbitrary. Mormon polygamy was outlawed in this country, despite the constitutional protection of freedom of religion, because it violated the sensibilities of the dominant Christian culture, even though no explicit biblical prohibition against polygamy exists. (Jesus’ teaching about divorce is no exception, since he quotes Genesis 2:24 as his authority, and this text was never understood in Israel as excluding polygamy. A man could become “one flesh” with more than one woman, through the act of intercourse.)

The problem of authority is not mitigated by the doctrine that the cultic requirements of the Old Testament were abrogated by the New, and that only the moral commandments of the Old Testament remain in force. For most of these sexual mores fall among the moral commandments. If Christ is the end of the law (Rom.10:4), if we have been discharged from the law to serve, not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit (Rom.7:6), then all of these Old Testament sexual mores come under the authority of the Spirit. We cannot then take even what Paul says as a new law. Even fundamentalists reserve the right to pick and choose which laws they will observe, though they seldom admit to doing just that. For the same Paul who condemns homosexual acts as sinful is the Paul who tells women like Anita Bryant to remain silent in the church (I Cor. 14:34). If Anita Bryant were consistently biblical, she would demand that gays be stoned to death — though she would never be able to say so in church!

 ‘Judge for Yourselves’

The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is simply that the Bible has no sexual ethic. There is no biblical sex ethic. The Bible knows only a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, or culture, or period.

Approached from the point of view of love, rather than that of law, the issue is at once transformed. Now the question is not “What is permitted?” but rather “What does it mean to love my homosexual neighbor?” Approached from the point of view of faith rather than of works, the question ceases to be “What constitutes a breach of divine law in the sexual realm?” and becomes instead “What constitutes obedience to the God revealed in the cosmic lover, Jesus Christ?” Approached from the point of view of the Spirit rather than of the letter, the question ceases to be “What does Scripture command?” and becomes “What is the Word that the Spirit speaks to the churches now, in the light of Scripture, tradition, theology, psychology, genetics, anthropology and biology?”

In a little-remembered statement, Jesus said, “Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?” (Luke 12:57). Such sovereign freedom strikes terror in the hearts of many Christians; they would rather be under law and be told what is right. Yet Paul himself echoes Jesus’ sentiment immediately preceding one of his possible references to homosexuality: “Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, matters pertaining to this life!” (I Cor. 6:3). The last thing Paul would want is for people to respond to his ethical advice as a new law engraved on tablets of stone. He is himself trying to “judge for himself what is right.” If now new evidence is in on the phenomenon of homosexuality, are we not obligated — no, free — to re-evaluate the whole issue in the light of all available data and decide, under God, for ourselves? Is this not the radical freedom for obedience which the gospel establishes?

It may, of course, be objected that this analysis has drawn our noses so close to texts that the general tenor of the whole is lost. The Bible clearly considers homosexuality a sin, and whether it is stated three times or 3,ooo is beside the point. Just as some of us grew up “knowing” that homosexuality was the unutterable sin, though no one ever spoke of it, so the whole Bible “knows” it to be wrong.

I freely grant all that. The issue is precisely whether that biblical judgment is correct.

The whole tenor of the Bible sanctions slavery as well, and nowhere attacks it as unjust. Are we prepared to argue that slavery today is biblically justified? The overwhelming burden of the biblical message is that women are inferior to men. Are we willing to perpetuate that status?

Those who want to interact with this blog are invited to “Leave a Reply” below.  A solid way to begin doing this is to offer “readback lines.”  To do this, quickly glace back over the entire blog and pick out the one or two lines that have made a deep impression upon you.  Copy them [CTRL-C] and then paste them [CTRL-V] into an empty comment box below.  If you wish, signal the emotion that you feel when reading your readback lines.  The primary emotions are anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise.   No need to further explain yourself.  It is enough to identify the text important to you and to name the emotion(s) that it evokes.  All of this normally takes less than a few minutes.

I and others will “thank you” for your contribution.  If you are tempted to say more, I urge you to hold back.  Your sense of safety and the safety of others is best protected by not getting overly wordy in the beginning.  This will come after a few days or weeks.

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Cardinal Ratzinger’s culpability

Someone sympathetic to the Cardinal could, for example, argue that Ratzinger was preoccupied with academic and administrative matters during nearly the whole of his priestly life; hence, he never had any reason to suspect that persons like Martha and Mary even existed.  Thus, one could argue that the Cardinal’s ignorance of “holy sex” between same-sex couples was regrettable but excusable.

Furthermore, since Cardinal Ratzinger entered seminary at a young age, he himself would have been largely or entirely a stranger to sexual experience as well; hence, he would have had no way of knowing that “in practice” sexual encounters were a blessing or a curse depending upon the degree to which mutual respect, mutual caring, and mutual affection were operative prior to, within, and after the sexual coupling.  Only a narrow legalistic mentality could imagine that sex between an engaged couple, for instance, could be entirely evil and sinful before their wedding night while, after their marriage, every sexual act would be judged to be entirely holy and grace-filled.  Priests who have done a measure of marriage counseling know full well that marital sex can sometimes be cruel, manipulative, and painful–far away from the “love making” normally expected.

Giving Cardinal Ratzinger the benefit of the doubt

So, I want to give Cardinal Ratzinger the benefit of the doubt.  I want to say that his ignorance (as described in the two paragraphs above) is excusable.  What is not excusable, however, is that Cardinal Ratzinger went ahead and made terrible judgments about the moral worth of same-sex unions when he was blissfully ignorant about these matters.  A doctor who made a medical diagnosis of a patient without personally examining him would be held as culpable.  In the same way, Ratzinger’s diagnosis of the worth of same-sex unions is culpable because he acted recklessly and irresponsibly.

The fact that he sent out letters to the bishops all over the world mandating that they would apply his diagnosis as irrevocable and definitive makes him all the more culpable.  Why so?  (a) Because he arrogantly imagines that his own judgments have nothing to gain from consultation with others; and (b) because he mistakingly imagines that neither he nor his staff at the CDF are in any way limited by their own culturally conditioned experiences and their past theological training; and (c) because God himself consulted with Abraham regarding his plans on how to deal with the sins of Sodom (Gen 18:17ff).

And God said, “Should I hide what I am about to do from Abraham?”  With even greater necessity, Cardinal Ratzinger should have revealed to representative bishops and theologians thoughout the world what he was about to say and to do relative to homosexual unions.  Had he done this, he might have sent out his tentative pastoral letter of 2003 with the following safeguards:

  1. To acknowledge that he has arrived at his own moral judgment on the worth of homosexual unions [based upon his own limited and culturally conditioned experiences];

  2. To insist that bishops, as true teachers, have the right to make their own diagnosis based on their own particular pastoral experiences and theological training;

  3. If they should arrive at the same informed diagnosis as his own, then they should go ahead and instruct their priests to act likewise;

  4. However, should they arrive at a diagnosis different from his own (esp. one that conflicts with his own), then they should NOT instruct their priests to act likewise.  Rather they should communicate to him in detail how they arrived at their unique findings;

  5. Why so?  (a) So that he [Cardinal Ratzinger] might better take into account data and judgments emerging from cultural situation different from his own.  (b) So that he [Cardinal Ratzinger] might entertain the possibility that he needs more prayer, reflection, and dialogue in order prudently to modify his original assessment [such that it might take into account a cultural situation previously unknown to him].

But Cardinal Ratzinger did not consult with the world-wide bishops.  He could have done this easily and face-to-face by making his anticipated pastoral letter the topic for the tri-annual  meeting of representative bishops in Rome.   Likewise, he could have consulted….

I leave aside my personal judgment of Cardinal Ratzinger.  I focus entirely here on the fact that he did not consult with other competent and informed bishops.  What his motives were need not enter here because these remain hidden to us.  The fact that there was no public consultation, however, is alarming.  It hints at Cardinal Ratzinger’s incomprehensible sense of self-sufficiency.  At no point does he ever hint that he has any major or minor natural limitations–limitations in terms of the impoverishment of his personal experiences with same-sex couples, limitations in terms of his nearly non-existent pastoral care of homosexuals, and limitations in terms of his impoverished training in the varieties of moral reasoning and in the dependence of moral theology upon the bible.

The immediate result is that his 2003 letter to the bishops receives poor marks.  He seems incapable of functioning outside of an authoritarian and essentialist moral analysis.  His pastoral index is dangerously low.  He wrongly presumes that those bishops, priests, and nuns who are ministering   to gays and lesbian Catholics have nothing to offer him.  His moral analysis is entirely negative.  He says nothing about the faith, hope, and responsible love that characterizes so many same-sex marriages.  Without saying it, he makes the fatal error of imagining that all the varieties of homosexuality practiced today are no different than what was being narrated in the story of Sodom (Gen 18) and in the condemnations of Paul in Rom 1:24-26.  As a result, the cardinal’s  biblical analysis is naive and amateurish.

More importantly, given all the errors named above (biblical, moral, and pastoral), why didn’t a storm of protest emerge?

#1  Why did the world-wide bishops not take issue with Cardinal Ratzinger’s 2003 letter in the same way that the bishops took issue when Paul VI published Humanae Vitae?  Did their silence signal assent?

#2  Why did the world-wide moral theologians not take issue with Cardinal Ratzinger’s analysis of same-sex unions in the same way that moral theologians took issue when Paul VI published Humanae Vitae?   Did their silence signal assent?

#3  Why were the challenges leveled by DignityUSA never acknowledged by the US bishops?  . . . never acknowledged in diocesan newspapers and journals.

If you wish to address one of these, please click on the link associated with each of the questions above.

How bishops are expected to function

Various mandates have been published respecting the proper functioning of bishops.  More importantly, in 2004,  the Congregation for Bishops prepared and disseminated “Apostolorum Successores” (Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops).   Here are three sections that I have selected because they specify the conduct required of bishops.  With even greater force, therefore, they apply to the conduct of Cardinal Ratzinger.

#1  Good government requires the Bishop to do all in his power to seek the truth and to make every effort to perfect his teaching, attentive not only to the quantity but also to the quality of his pronouncements. In this way he will avoid the risk of adopting pastoral solutions of a purely formal nature which fail to address the substance of the problems (sec. 57).

#2  The Bishop should make it his business to acquire accurate knowledge of the common good of the diocese. This knowledge should be continually updated and confirmed through frequent visits among the people of God entrusted to him – so that he comes to know them – and also through study, socio-religious research, the counsel of prudent persons and constant dialogue with the faithful, since modern life is subject to such rapid changes (sec. 58).

#3  The Bishop will judge all things with prudence. . . .  With a merciful and benign yet firm spirit, he will rise above personal interests, avoiding undue haste or partisan spirit, and will be sure to listen to the interested parties before reaching a judgement on their actions (sec. 65).

I leave it to my readers to give a grade to Cardinal Ratzinger relative to these three segments of Apostolorum Successores.

 

Those who want to interact with “Cardinal Ratzinger’s culpability,” are invited to post now.  A solid way to begin doing this is to offer “readback lines.”  To do this, glace back over the entire blog and pick out the one or two lines that have made a deep impression upon you.  Copy them and then drop them into a feedback text box below.  If you wish, signal the emotion that comes with these readback lines: love, anger, joy, anxiety, peace, etc.

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How Jesus Opposed the Fundamentalists

 

Our struggle against fundamentalism within our own churches and within our own families needs all the help we can get from Jesus. Let’s explore this.

Did Jesus Experience Fundamentalism?

When the Gospels are explored, it is clear that homosexuality and same-sex marriages do not show up as pressing issues in the world of Jesus of Nazareth. However, what one does discover is that Jesus did confront Jewish fundamentalists during the period when he moved through the towns of Galilee and preached in their synagogues. Here is the first instance:

2:23 One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain.2:24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” 2:25 And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? 2:26 He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.” 2:27 Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath;2:28 so the Son of Man[i] is lord even of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:23-28)

The setting here is that Jesus and his disciples are passing through grainfields as they go from one town to another (Mark 1:38-39). On the way, his disciples are hungry. They take the tassels of the wheat and rub them between their hands to remove the outer covering and eat the grains. I have done this myself from time to time. The grains are rather tasteless, but they do provide enough nourishment to at least take the edge off of my hunger. According to the traditions of the time, anyone was permitted to do this at the edge of a farmer’s field but they must not enter into the field (stomping down the stalks of grain as they go).

The Pharisees here are the Jewish fundamentalists that Jesus encountered. Notice that their complaint is directed toward Jesus and not toward the disciples themselves. They clearly regard Jesus as responsible for training his disciples; hence, the critique of the disciples is actually a complaint against Jesus that he has not trained them properly.

They probably expect that Jesus will rein them in. But he doesn’t. Rather, he turns his attention to the Pharisees and tries to win them over to his point of view. In brief, he engages them in dialogue. To do this, he cites the case of David and his companions who are fleeing the wrath of King Saul and take the liberty to raid the loaves in the temple reserved for the priests. This is an excellent teaching moment.

The Pharisees, in this instance, would hardly be inclined to support the claim of the priests; rather, Jesus would expect them to grant David the right (given the circumstances) to take (not to be given) the temple loaves to satisfy his hunger and the hunger of his companions. Jesus deliberately chooses this test case because David (who is not yet the king) here breaks the law to satisfy his hunger. But this is exactly what the disciples of Jesus are doing: they are breaking the law of the Sabbath in order to satisfy their hunger.

Fundamentalists don’t know how to make exceptions. They don’t make exceptions for themselves, and they are quick to bring others in line so that they don’t make exceptions either.[ii] They are sticklers for maintaining the letter of the law, which, for them appears black and white.

The Mosaic Law (Torah), by the way, specifically says that “harvesting” is not permitted on the Sabbath. Taking a dozen handfuls of grain can hardly be equated with harvesting. But Jesus doesn’t want to quibble with them as to how many handfuls a man can take and eat before it becomes “harvesting.” In other words, Jesus doesn’t want to get bogged down in the convoluted logic of the Pharisees. Rather, he wants to lift them out of their familiar mindset and to teach them that David took the liberty to break the law and that it follows, as night follows day, that every Jew has the right to break the law when their personal circumstances merit an exception.

How Jesus Opposed the Jewish Taliban

Same here with Jesus. He is not pestering the Pharisees to practice what he practices; rather, he is trying to stop them from imposing their thinking on everyone else. This is what fundamentalist love to do. They persuade themselves that they have “God’s absolute point of view” and that their mission is to bring everyone else into line “with their God.” In so doing, they become the Catholic Taliban and justify their “moral terrorism” as somehow required by God himself. This is why, as shown above, Pope Francis calls them “godless.”

Do the Phaisees stop pestering Jesus and concede that the disciples do have sufficient cause to override the Sabbath? We don’t know, but probably not. In any case, the Evangelists do not tell us. But the Evangelists do go on to tell us that Jesus put forward a general norm: “The Sabbath was made for [the benefit of] humankind, not humankind [made] for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27 and par.). Thus, Jesus takes the stand that “the day of rest” was designed by God as a blessing to relieve exhaustion from the six days of work. In Gen 1, even God shows himself as resting follow the exertions of the six days of creation. Thus, according to this, God learned from his own experience how a day of rest could be beneficial. Hence, according to Jesus, every Jew was invited to free themselves of a wooden conformity with Sabbath regulations, especially when the welfare of suffering individuals was at stake.

This has a bearing on our topic of homosexuality. How is it that Evangelical Fundamentalists are so quick to gather up texts condemning homosexual sex when they so easily dispense themselves from the Law of Moses that condemns anyone failing to keep the Sabbath rest with death by stoning (Exod 31:14, 35:3; Deut 5:13; Nehemiah 13:15-21)? Or, to take up again the argument of Matthew Vines: How can Evangelical Fundamentalists turn to those on their right hand and preach the good news of the Gospel to heterosexuals saying, “God solemnly promises you companionship and sexual intimacy when he says, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him’”(Gen 2:18) and, then, to turn to their left and say to the homosexuals, “None of this applies to you. God blocks his ears to your cries of loneliness, and he makes no provision for any sexual intimacy to gladden your hearts. You will go into your twilight years utterly alone and no one will care for you as you take you final breath”? And if Jesus acted outside of the letter of the Mosaic Law when he was moved by compassion for the man with the withered arm and moved by compassion for his disciples stricken by hunger, would not this same Jesus rush to act outside of the Christian Code of Ethics in order to bring a speedy relief to those homosexuals pleading to have Christians recognize the legitimacy of their love and their desire for marriage? And should not the churches be the first (rather than the last) to recognize that God created the blessings of marriage for both the heterosexual and the homosexual alike?

Then another case of Sabbath fundamentalism is introduced:

3:1 Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand.3:2 They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him.3:3 And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.” 3:4 Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent.3:5 He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.3:6 The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.3:7 Jesus departed with his disciples to the sea, and a great multitude from Galilee followed him. (Mark 3:1-7)

In the earlier case, Mark makes it clear that Jesus was not accused for violating the Sabbath. Only his disciples were accused. In this second case, Jesus stands alone as the healer and he alone is accused. This narrative presupposes that Jesus has already gained the reputation as a healer (Mark 1:39-2:12) and that his enemies acknowledged his power to heal but attributed it to Beelzebub (Mark 3:22). At one point, Jesus uses the metaphor of “the physician” to describe his work (Mark 2:17). It cannot be that “magic words” are used, since Jews distrusted magic and a magical healing would not constitute “work.” The presumption of Jesus’ accusers here must be that healing involved some manipulation of the arm or hand as a physician would do. Likewise, the term “withered” does not have to imply a congenital deformity because the term “restored” implies that the hand was useless and Jesus restored its use.[iii] Jerome, for instance, thought that the man was a mason who suffered an injury that put him out of work. Jesus restored his hand and restored his livelihood as well. It must also be noticed that if the restoration were very dramatic (bone and flesh are suddenly or gradually entirely transformed), the sheer power of the transformation would have caused awe and fear in Jesus’ enemies because they would know that he could afflict a man just as well as heal a man. So the fact that they do not back away or shudder with amazement also indicates that Mark does not think of this event as frightening. The issue, after all, is whether Jesus would heal on the Sabbath.

Notice also that the healing in this narrative is not endangering the life of the man. Everyone would recognize the legitimacy for life-saving remedies on the Sabbath. In this case, therefore, Jesus uses this as a teaching lesson for the Pharisees. The issue is not that of doing a “miracle,” since even a miracle would be presumed to be done with God’s power and God is surely the Lord of the Sabbath. The words of Jesus as well make this clear: “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?” Jesus is on target, here, when he gives them a black and white question. Do good or do evil? Save a life or destroy a life? If they say, the former, then Jesus has their approval and can go ahead without any fear that he and his adversaries are on the same page? If they choose the latter terms, then Jesus has them over the barrel because they will be unable to justify their choice from the Scriptures and will look silly in the minds of the people. So they are sullenly silent.

He looked around at them with anger (Mark 3:5). Most Christians only think of Jesus as flaring up in anger only when he drives the money-changers from the temple. But here he is livid with anger. Surely there is a message here for Pope Francis and his supporters who are menaced by Cardinal Burke and his Taliban supporters.

In sum, Jesus deliberately heals a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath and defends his disciples for picking grain and satisfying their hunger on the Sabbath. He turns on his critics by questioning them sternly: “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do well or to do harm?” (Mark 3:4 and par.) and again “Have you never read what David did when we was in need and was hungry?” (Mark 2:25 and par.). In the end, he entirely dismisses the notion of “true religion” held by the Sabbath fundamentalists. They imagine that they are defending God’s honor by ramrodding Sabbath rules that tolerate no exceptions down the throats of the weak and the suffering.

The Jewish Taliban Was Paralyzed by Jesus

Jesus turns on his critics by questioning them sternly: “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm?” (Mark 3:4 and par.) and again “Have you never read what David did when we was in need and was hungry?” (Mark 2:25 and par.). In the end, he entirely dismisses the notion of “true religion” embraced by his critics. He ends up saying to them, “The Sabbath was made for [the benefit of] humankind, not humankind [made] for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27 and par.). Thus, Jesus takes the stand that “the day of rest” was designed by God as a blessing to relieve exhaustion from the six days of work. In Gen 1, God shows himself as resting follow the exertions of the six days of creation. Thus, according to this, God learned from his own experience how a day of rest could be beneficial. Hence, according to Jesus, every Jew was invited to rid themselves of a wooden conformity with Sabbath regulations especially when the welfare of suffering individuals was at stake.

What Does Pope Francis Think About Fundamentalists?

Pope Francis understands the corrosive effects of fundamentalism. He knows full well that it has infected the Catholic Church and that it subverts true religion and causes tremendous suffering[vii] whenever it shows its ugly head. Let Pope Francis speaks for himself:

So some may ask, “Pope Francis is the pope. Why isn’t he fixing this?” If one of the reporters had asked this question, Francis would have probably replied:

I’m doing what I can. But I’m not a Superman that can see and hear the evil being done by fundamentalist in ever diocese in the world and then rush faster than a speeding bullet to provide a papal remedy. So that’s why I said a moment ago ‘We have to combat it.’ Be fearless!

Pope Francis is recruiting you and I to challenge this menace[viii] wherever it shows up in our part of the world.

Those who want to interact with this blog are invited to “Leave a Reply” below.  A solid way to begin doing this is to offer “readback lines.”  To do this, quickly glace back over the entire blog and pick out the one or two lines that have made a deep impression upon you.  Copy them [CTRL-C] and then paste them [CTRL-V] into an empty comment box below.  If you wish, signal the emotion that you feel when reading your readback lines.  The primary emotions are anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise.   No need to further explain yourself.  It is enough to identify the text important to you and to name the emotion(s) that it evokes.  All of this normally takes less than a few minutes.

I and others will “thank you” for your contribution.  If you are tempted to say more, I urge you to hold back.  Your sense of safety and the safety of others is best protected by not getting overly wordy in the beginning.  This will come after a few days or weeks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Endnotes and Leave a Reply~~~~~~~~

[i] Some commentators take Mark 2:28 to be an assertion of Jesus’ authority to act like God, who is the Lord of the Sabbath. “To claim then to be Lord of the Sabbath was essentially to claim to be God.” This appears to me to be a mistaken understanding. Jesus is not pulling rank; rather, he is saying that everyone (his disciples and David included) has the right to judge (as a lord) when exceptional circumstances warrant setting aside the normal rules for “the day of rest.” Far from asserting his own authority, Jesus is affirming the right of his disciples (and of David) to judge such matters for themselves without any need to “get permission” from the Pharisees or from the priests. Notice, too, that David did not ask permission to take the special loaves reserved for the priests even though they were everywhere in the temple.

Scholars have noticed that the “son of man” sayings in the Gospels go in two directions. At times Jesus uses “son of man” as an oblique reference to himself (e.g., Mark 2:10, 8:31, 9:9, 9:31). At other times, Jesus clearly used “son of man” to refer to a heavenly being who will come in the end time to gather the elect and to judge the living and the dead (Mark 8:38, 13:26, 14:62). The Book of Enoch and Dan 7 specifically support this latter use of “Son of Man.”

Mark 2:28 doesn’t harmonize easily in either of these two directions. Mark 2:27 says, in effect, that ‘the Sabbath was made to serve humankind, and not humankind made to serve the Sabbath.’ Jesus, after all, is supporting the right of his disciples to decide for themselves whether they are permitted to take the edge off their hunger on the Sabbath. They don’t ask anyone for permission. They don’t even ask Jesus. Hence, Mark 2:28 has the sense of meaning ‘it therefore follows that everyone [every ‘son of a man’] has authority to decide how to keep the Sabbath.’ The Pharisees might have been inclined to accept such a judgment because they believed that every Jew had the right to learn to read and to interpret the Torah for themselves.

[ii] It is not exactly right to say they make no exceptions. Taking the case of tubal ligations, we saw how Kukla (following the teaching of the Vatican) allows it in some well-defined circumstances. So far so good. The menace of fundamentalism is that it apparently gives men like Kukla the right to decide what circumstances are allowed and which are not. They then adjust their definitions and their logic to permit just these and nothing else. The menace of fundamentalism is that Kukla now believes that he must guide every Catholic to use his definitions and his logic. When you check online, you will find a woman asking him whether she can have sexual relations with her husband if her reasons for getting a tubal ligation were immoral. “This greatly concerns me!” she says. What is going on here? Kukla is promoting this woman’s entry into a destructive fundamentalism. “Think like me and you will be saved,” says Kukla. Can you imagine the suffering that would be inflicted on her husband if this women would decide that his operation was a “permanent contraceptive” that required of her that she never make love to him again until the operation was reversed? Jesus says, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them” (Matt 23:4). To understand Pope Francis in a case such as this, see n. 111.

[iii] Robert H. Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 153.

[iv] See full text at http://prolife365.com/porn-viewing/

[v] Used twice: http://prolife365.com/those-awaiting-the-synod-to-redefine-the-churchs-dogmatic-teachings-on-marriage-will-be-greatly-disappointed/ and http://prolife365.com/problems-with-gay-marriage/

[vi] Thomas Aquinas makes the point that anger is the passion that naturally arises when justice is being denied. “Far from being a sin, ira [Latin: anger] is a positive good when directed by reason” (II-II. 158. 8 ad 2). Thus, some theologians argue that “not being angry at times may, given the circumstances, constitute a sin” (Robert Miner, “Thomas Aquinas on the Passions: A Study of Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae 22-48,” p. 286).

[vii] Karen Doherty, an organizer of the Conference of Catholic Lesbians, tells her own personal story of the meeting that she had in 1984 with Cardinal John O’Connor in NYC:

So again, [this] was one of those naïve, hopeful beliefs that if they [the Church leaders] would only hear us and hear our story, then they’d change. And I did remember thinking about him, because his predecessor would not meet at all with lesbian and gay groups, that at least he did. And he didn’t come in with a battery of advisors or canon lawyers, or anyone. He came in alone. So he met alone with about ten or twelve representatives from the various groups, including Dignity and CCL [Conference of Catholic Lesbians]. And he listened to what people had to say. And there was some heated exchange. And what he ended the meeting was, is that the teachings of the church are very deep on this issue, and I’ve heard you, but I do not see that there is going to be any change whatsoever. And I remember (cries as she tells this story) a man sitting next to me that had lost his children [when he came out as gay] starting to cry. And all the Catholics crying because there was no escape [from our situation]. You were hearing it, that no matter what, we [the bishops] can’t take you as you are. And I remember just sitting there feeling bad. And there was just a sense of resolve that we were going to go on [despite the bishops]. (http://www.lgbtran.org/Exhibits/OralHistory/Doherty/KDoherty.pdf)

After hearing many cases of parents disowning their children, I did not want to overlook the grief felt by parents who have heard their bishops abandon them.  At the same time, this narrative tells the story of how parents often get abandoned by their children.  They do this, in large part, because they feel betrayed by the dark secrets that their parents have concealed from them and because they feel ashamed of their parent’s choice of a homosexual life-style.  Underneath it all is the nasty logic of Ratzinger’s dogma of homosexuality.

Those who want to interact with “Cardinal Ratzinger’s culpability,” are invited to “Leave a Reply” below.  A solid way to begin doing this is to offer “readback lines.”  To do this, quickly glace back over the entire blog and pick out the one or two lines that have made a deep impression upon you.  Copy them [CTRL-C] and then paste them [CTRL-V] into an empty comment box below.  If you wish, signal the emotion that you feel when reading your readback lines.  The primary emotions are anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise.   No need to further explain yourself.  It is enough to identify the text important to you and to name the emotion(s) that it evokes.  All of this normally takes less than a few minutes.

I and others will “thank you” for your contribution.  If you are tempted to say more, I urge you to hold back.  Your sense of safety and the safety of others is best protected by not getting overly wordy in the beginning.  This will come after a few days

Posted on

How Jesus opposed the Jewish Taliban

Consider the case of Jesus.  He is not pestering the Pharisees to practice what he practices; rather, he is trying to stop them from imposing their thinking on everyone else.  This is what fundamentalist love to do.  They persuade themselves that they have “God’s absolute point of view” and that their mission is to bring everyone else into line with “their God.”  In so doing, they become the Catholic Taliban and justify their “moral terrorism” as somehow required by God himself.  This is why Pope Francis calls them “godless.”

Do the Pharisees stop pestering Jesus and concede that the disciples do have sufficient cause to override the Sabbath?  We don’t know, but probably not.  In any case, the Evangelists do not tell us.  But the Evangelists do go on to tell us that Jesus put forward a general norm: “The Sabbath was made for [the benefit of] humankind, not humankind [made] for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27 and par.).  Thus, Jesus takes the stand that “the day of rest” was designed by God as a blessing to relieve exhaustion from the six days of work.  In Gen. 1, even God shows himself as resting follow the exertions of the six days of creation.  Thus, according to this, God learned from his own experience how a day of rest could be beneficial.  Hence, according to Jesus, every Jew was invited to free themselves of a wooden conformity with Sabbath regulations, especially when the welfare of suffering individuals was at stake.

This has a bearing on our topic of homosexuality.  How is it that Evangelical Fundamentalists are so quick to gather up texts condemning homosexual sex when they so easily dispense themselves from the Law of Moses that condemns anyone failing to keep the Sabbath rest with death by stoning (Exod. 31:14, 35:3; Deut. 5:13; Neh. 13:15-21)?  Or, to take up again the argument of Matthew Vines: How can Evangelical Fundamentalists turn to those on their right hand and preach the good news of the Gospel to heterosexuals saying, “God solemnly promises you companionship and sexual intimacy when he says, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him’”(Gen. 2:18) and, then, to turn to their left and say to homosexuals, “None of this applies to you.  God blocks his ears to your cries of loneliness, and he makes no provision for any sexual intimacy to gladden your hearts.  You will go into your twilight years utterly alone and no one will care for you as you take you final breath”?  And if Jesus acted outside of the letter of the Mosaic Law when he was moved by compassion for the man with the withered arm and moved by compassion for his disciples stricken by hunger, would not this same Jesus rush to act outside of the Christian Code of Ethics in order to bring a speedy relief to those gays and lesbians pleading to have Christians recognize the legitimacy of their love and their desire for marriage?  And should not the churches be the first (rather than the last) to recognize that God created the blessings of marriage for both the heterosexual and the homosexual alike?

Then another case of Sabbath fundamentalism is introduced:

3:1 Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. 3:2 they watched him to see whether he would cure him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. 3:3 And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.”  3:4 Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. 3:5 He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. 3:6 The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. 3:7 Jesus departed with his disciples to the sea, and a great multitude from Galilee followed him. (Mark 3:1-7)

In the earlier case, Mark makes it clear that Jesus was not accused for violating the Sabbath.  Only his disciples were accused.  In this second case, Jesus stands alone as the healer and he alone is accused.  This narrative presupposes that Jesus has already gained the reputation as a healer (Mark 1:39-2:12) and that his enemies acknowledged his power to heal but attributed it to Beelzebub (Mark 3:22).  At one point, Jesus uses the metaphor of “the physician” to describe his work (Mark 2:17).  It cannot be that “magic words” are used, since Jews distrusted magic and a magical healing would not constitute “work.”  The presumption of Jesus’ accusers here must be that healing involved some manipulation of the arm or hand as a physician would do.  Likewise, the term “withered” does not have to imply a congenital deformity because the term “restored” implies that the hand was useless and Jesus restored its use.[i]  Jerome, for instance, thought that the man was a mason who suffered an injury that put him out of work.  Jesus restored his hand and restored his livelihood as well.  It must also be noticed that if the restoration were very dramatic (bone and flesh are suddenly or gradually entirely transformed), the sheer power of the transformation would have caused awe and fear in Jesus’ enemies because they would know that he could afflict a man just as well as heal a man.  So the fact that they do not back away or shudder with amazement also indicates that Mark does not think of this event as frightening.  The issue, after all, is whether Jesus would heal on the Sabbath.

Notice also that the healing in this narrative is not endangering the life of the man.  Everyone would recognize the legitimacy for life-saving remedies on the Sabbath.  In this case, therefore, Jesus uses this as a teaching lesson for the Pharisees.  The issue is not that of doing a “miracle,” since even a miracle would be presumed to be done with God’s power and God is surely the Lord of the Sabbath.  The words of Jesus as well make this clear: “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?”  Jesus is on target, here, when he gives them a black and white question.  Do good or do evil?  Save a life or destroy a life?  If they say, the former, then Jesus has their approval and can go ahead without any fear that he and his adversaries are on the same page.  If they choose the latter terms, then Jesus has them over the barrel because they will be unable to justify their choice from the Scriptures and will look silly in the minds of the people.  So they are sullenly silent.

He looked around at them with anger (Mark 3:5).  Most Christians only think of Jesus as flaring up in anger only when he drives the money-changers from the temple.  But here he is livid with anger.  This is how I feel when writing about Archbishop Schnurr, Father Kneib, and Father Coelho—“Don’t you dare treat my Brothers and Sisters in this way!”  I want to scream at them.  “You’re destroying people’s lives with your fundamentalist bullshit.  Stop it!”[ii]  Pure and unadulterated anger[iii] is sometime the only authentic response to the evil that fundamentalist do. . . .

How the Jewish Taliban was paralyzed by Jesus

Jesus turns on his critics by questioning them sternly: “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm?” (Mark 3:4 and par.) and again “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry?” (Mark 2:25 and par.).  In the end, he entirely dismisses the notion of “true religion” embraced by his critics. He ends up saying to them, “The Sabbath was made for [the benefit of] humankind, not humankind [made] for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27 and par.).  Thus, Jesus takes the stand that “the day of rest” was designed by God as a blessing to relieve exhaustion from the six days of work.  In Gen. 1, God shows himself as resting following the exertions of the six days of creation.  Thus, according to this, God learned from his own experience how a day of rest could be beneficial.  Hence, according to Jesus, every Jew was invited to rid themselves of a wooden conformity with Sabbath regulations especially when the welfare of suffering individuals was at stake.

How Jesus impacts events today

This has a bearing on our topic of homosexuality.  How is it that Evangelical Fundamentalists are so quick to gather up texts condemning homosexual sex when they so easily dispense themselves from the Law of Moses that condemns anyone failing to keep the Sabbath rest with death by stoning (Exod. 31:14, 35:3; Deut. 5:13; Neh. 13:15-21)?  Or, to take up again the argument of Matthew Vines: How can Evangelical Fundamentalists be so certain that God wants to extend to heterosexuals companionship and sexual intimacy when he said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Gen. 2:18) but, then, he turns around and says to the homosexual, “None of this applies to you.  God blocks his ears to your cries of loneliness and he makes no provision for any sexual intimacy to gladden your lives”? 

And if Jesus acted outside of the letter of the Mosaic Law when he was moved by compassion for the man with the withered arm and compassion for his disciples stricken by hunger, would not this same Jesus rush to act outside of the Christian Code of Ethics today in order to bring a speedy relief to those gays and lesbians pleading to have some small recognition of the legitimacy of their love and their desire for marriage?  And should not the churches be the first (rather than the last) to recognize that God created the blessings of marriage for both the heterosexual and the homosexual alike?

Last of all, we need to note that confronting fundamentalists is a dangerous affair.  The Jewish fundamentalists take their complaints to the court of Herod, King of Galilee.  According to the Synoptic Gospels, Herod had John the Baptist arrested on trumped-up charges.  Because of his indiscretion on his birthday, Harod gets trapped into killing him even though “Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him” (Mark 6:20 and par.).  Jesus could well be next on the list. . .

Many other texts in the Gospels demonstrate how Jesus even challenged certain bad habits on the part of his own disciples.  Consider this:

An argument arose among them [the 12 disciples] as to which one of them was the greatest.  But Jesus, aware of their inner thoughts, took a little child and put it by his side, and said to them, “Whoever welcomes this child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me; for the least among all of you is the greatest.”

One can think here of how the churches argue among themselves as to which denomination is the greatest or which is the closest to God’s heart.  One can think here also of how Catholic fundamentalists dispute with each other as to what sexual ethics is most pleasing to God.  And how about those Catholics who secretly pray in their hearts: “Thank you God for not creating me or any of my children as homosexuals”?  How does God respond to this prayer?

Those who want to interact with this blog are invited to “Leave a Reply” below.  A solid way to begin doing this is to offer “readback lines.”  To do this, quickly glace back over the entire blog and pick out the one or two lines that have made a deep impression upon you.  Copy them [CTRL-C] and then paste them [CTRL-V] into an empty comment box below.  If you wish, signal the emotion that you feel when reading your readback lines.  The primary emotions are anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise.   No need to further explain yourself.  It is enough to identify the text important to you and to name the emotion(s) that it evokes.  All of this normally takes less than a few minutes.

I and others will “thank you” for your contribution.  If you are tempted to say more, I urge you to hold back.  Your sense of safety and the safety of others is best protected by not getting overly wordy in the beginning.  This will come after a few days or weeks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Endnotes and Leave a Reply~~~~~~~~

 

[i] Robert H. Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on his Apology for the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 153.

[ii] Used twice: http://prolife365.com/those-awaiting-the-synod-to-redefine-the-churchs-dogmatic-teachings-on-marriage-will-be-greatly-disappointed/ and  http://prolife365.com/problems-with-gay-marriage/

[iii] Thomas Aquinas makes the point that anger is the passion that naturally arises when justice is being denied.  “Far from being a sin, ira [Latin: anger] is a positive good when directed by reason” (II-II. 158. 8 ad 2).  Thus, some theologians argue that “not being angry at times may, given the circumstances, constitute a sin” (Robert Miner, “Thomas Aquinas on the Passions: A Study of Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae 22-48,” p. 286).

Posted on

Two biblical condemnations of same-sex unions

Cardinal Ratzinger uses arguments largely drawn from reason.  Other opponents of gays and lesbians, however, give much greater attention to those critical texts in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures that explicitly condemn men having sex with other men.  In fact, the terms “sodomy” and “sodomize” came into the English language due to the biblical narrative (Gen 19:1-15) that describes how God’s wrath fell on the city of Sodom precisely because its male citizenry took delight in humiliating outsiders by raping them anally.

This biblical text and others as well never speak of men having sex with other men as a sign and symbol of the love bond that binds them together.[i] God’s wrath fell on the city of Sodom because of detestable “acts of hate” being inflicted upon strangers.  There is no biblical text that either approves or disapproves of “acts of love” between committed same-sex partners.   

The condemnation of Paul in Rom 1:24-26

St. Paul in his letter to the Romans condemns idolatry for it leads to homosexuality.  Idolatry, in Paul’s mind, leaves aside worship of the Creator and, in its place, “exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals.” In parallel fashion, idolatry leads a man to exchange the sexual use of his wife and to seek sexual satisfaction[ii] with another man: “men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another.”

Paul, in his letters, condemns shameful acts of sex.  He condemns the man sleeping with his step-mother (1 Cor 5:1).  He condemns “male prostitutes”[iii] and “sodomites” (1 Cor 6:9).  Most scholars[iv] remind us that Corinth was famously dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite (Venus) and that temple prostitution was the standard way for religious devotees, both men and women, to worship the goddess and to maintain the temple staff at the same time.   The fact that Paul condemns “idolaters” first and then goes on to immediately name “adulterers, male prostitutes, and sodomites” (1 Cor 6:9 NRSV) may signal that, here also, Paul names the immoral offshoots of temple worship.

Paul is quite possibly aware that cultic prostitution was commonly practiced by the ancient Near Eastern fertility religions and that, from the moment the Israelites entered into the Promised Land, they struggled to avoid such practices (Num 25:1-9, Jdg 2:17-19). This became especially prevalent beginning with the monarchy of Rehoboam (1 Kgs 14:24) and extending to the monarchy of Josiah (2 Kgs 23:7).  According to Exod 34:11-16 the practice of exterminating conquered tribes was necessitated in order to wipe out cultic prostitution.  During the Deteronomic reform, the Law of Moses was expanded specifically to forbid cultic prostitution for Israelites (Deut 23:16-17, Amos 2:7).  Thus, to the degree that Paul was aware of these aspects of his Jewish historical background, he would have had a predisposition to seeing a causal link between idolatry and cultic prostitution.

In the Letter to the Romans, Paul expressly condemns “homosexuality.”  Why so?  Here is the progression in his argument.

First, men exchanged “the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature [idols] rather than the Creator” (Rom 1:25).  Next, as a result, “God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity” (1:24).   “Their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another” (1:26).

The link that Paul draws between idolatry and homosexuality[v] may appear obscure to modern thinkers.  This link, however, is very clear and dear to Paul.  The implied logic is this: Make the mistake of exchanging worship of the true God for idol worship and, in the next moment, you will make the mistake of exchanging natural sex for unnatural sex.

Think now with me about Martha and Mary, two lesbian lay-ministers in my parish who asked me to join with a dozen others to witness their “vows of perpetual fidelity.”  Is this anything like what Paul was encountering?  Let’s explore this:

  1. Martha and Mary worship exclusively with me at Annunciation Catholic Church.  Paul is condemning devotees of the goddess Aphrodite (Venus) in Corinth.
  2. Martha and Mary have been living in an exclusive relationship, sharing their daily lives, for over a dozen years.  Paul is condemning female devotees who exchange sex with female prostitutes (probably slaves).  This is decidedly not an exclusive relationship and does not imply an abiding emotional bond together.
  3. Martha and Mary have chosen a same-sex union because their Creator designed them to have an innate sexual attraction to their own kind.  Union with a man would be “unnatural” for them and contrary to God design for them.  Paul, on the other hand, condemns temple prostitution because (a) it is a form of idolatry and (b) it requires an “unnatural” act of sex.

In conclusion, Paul’s condemnation of homosexuality in Rom 1:24-26 can have no application to the same-sex union of Martha and Mary as it exists today.  Paul was condemning homosexuality as he knew it in his day, namely, as an offshoot of temple prostitution.

In Ohio, most Catholic churches have a summer festival in order to raise a major portion of their operating expenses.  At these festivals, Catholics get an opportunity “to have some good, clean fun together” and “to meet their neighbors” as well.  From time to time, some unsavory practices do creep into these fairs.  Some would be shocked to find black-jack-poker tables and belly dancing at a few of these fairs.  I myself was especially disappointed to find cruelty to animals–baby ducks being forced to take part in betting races and baby fish slowly suffocating in plastic bags being offered as prizes.   At some Protestant churches in the remote hills of Kentucky, worshipers routinely reach into cages and pick up rattle snakes with their bare hands.  They do this in order to testify to the power of God to overcome serpents.  In none of these cases, however, I have yet to find a Christian congregation sponsoring “sacred prostitution” by way of funding the work of the Christian ministry.  Should any church ever encourage such a practice, Paul’s condemnation would surely apply.  That is for sure.

But it is equally certain that the case of Martha and Mary has nothing to do with prostitution and idolatry.[vi]

Anyone who says that it does has never properly done their homework.  Thus, I challenge Cardinal Ratzinger and his supporters to cease and desist from calling upon Rom 1:24-26 by way of passing judgment as to whether God loves same-sex marriages.

Listen to the words of a prominent supporter of Cardinal Ratzinger: Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, Archbishop Emeritus of Guadalajara, Mexico:

“There are many people who have the misfortune of being homosexual but who live chastely,” said Sandoval. “Those, yes, [who live chastely] are going to enter into the kingdom of God. But those who practice it [homosexually] will not enter the kingdom of God. St. Paul says that. And homosexuality is condemned, totally condemned, in the Old Testament, in Genesis, and by St. Paul in the New Testament.”

“So just as those who have normal tendencies, and aren’t married, have to abstain [from sex], so those who have abnormal tendencies must also abstain,” said Sandoval, adding, “Even more so, knowing that homosexuality is a psychological illness which can be cured. Let them seek a cure, because homosexuality is never permitted.”

Cardinal Sandoval finds support from Cardinal Ratzinger’s when it comes time to using Rom 1:24-26 to condemn contemporary same-sex marriages.  But not even Ratzinger maintains the dubious notion that “homosexuality is a psychological illness” that might someday find a “cure.”  Thus, Cardinal Sandoval has not only failed to do his homework on Rom 1:24-26, he has also failed to keep up with advances in the field of psychology.  Being a cardinal in the Catholic Church, truth to say, offers him no protection from making errors in either the field of psychology or in the field of biblical studies.

When it comes to biblical studies, make no mistake about it.  This is not Cardinal Ratzinger’s specialization.  He has neither the training nor the interest in keeping abreast with contemporary biblical studies.  This being the case, then I must ask the Cardinal:

“Why did you not get the outside help you needed in biblical studies?”

“How could you have possibly imagined that homosexual couples today were doing the same sort of things described in Gen 19:1-15 and Rom 1:24-26?”

Those who want to interact with this blog are invited to “Leave a Reply” below.  A solid way to begin doing this is to offer “readback lines.”  To do this, quickly glace back over the entire blog and pick out the one or two lines that have made a deep impression upon you.  Copy them [CTRL-C] and then paste them [CTRL-V] into an empty comment box below.  If you wish, signal the emotion that you feel when reading your readback lines.  The primary emotions are anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise.   No need to further explain yourself.  It is enough to identify the text important to you and to name the emotion(s) that it evokes.  All of this normally takes less than a few minutes.

I and others will “thank you” for your contribution.  If you are tempted to say more, I urge you to hold back.  Your sense of safety and the safety of others is best protected by not getting overly wordy in the beginning.  This will come after a few days or weeks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Endnotes and Leave a Reply~~~~~~~~

 

[i] Matthew Vines discovery that the biblical texts commonly used to condemn homosexuality do not address the morality of committed homosexual unions has been noted by Roman Catholic biblical scholars:

The 1986 Letter set to the bishops by Cardinal Ratzinger cites six scriptural passages that demonstrate that “homosexual behavior” is immoral (Gen. 19:1-11; Lev. 18:22, 20:13; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; 1 Tim 1:9-10; Rom. 1:26-27). The Catechism of the Catholic Church enforces this position as well: “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved” (§2378).  But this is disputed by a number of biblical scholars and theologians.

Key points made by biblical scholars such as Derrick Bailey, Victor Paul Furnish, James P. Hanigan, Daniel Helminiak, H. Darrell Lance, and Robin Scroggs include:

  1. There are translation difficulties. For example, it was 1946 before the term “homosexual” first appeared in an English translation (1946 Revised Standard Version). Homosexuality is not a prominent biblical concern. The prophets, the gospels, and Jesus say nothing about homosexuality as a “same-sex attraction.”
  2. These six scriptural texts are not in passages dealing with moral principles but appear in contexts where the focus is something else. For example, most biblical scholars believe the primary sin of Sodom is inhospitality. Jesus implies that in Luke 10:8-12 (If not welcomed in town, wipe dust of feet in protest. “I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.”). None of the 21 later Hebrew Scripture references to Sodom even mention homosexual acts.
  3. The biblical writers had no concept of homosexual orientation. Scientists first began to understand homosexuality as an orientation in the mid-to-late 1800s.

The Bible takes no direct stand on the morality of homogenital acts as such nor on the morality of gay and lesbian relationships as we conceive them today. . . . That is all that can be said about biblical teaching on homosexuality. If people would still seek to know if gay and lesbian sex in itself is good or evil, if homogenital acts per se are right or wrong, they will have to look elsewhere for an answer. For the fact of the matter is simple enough. The Bible never addresses that question. More than that, the Bible seems deliberately unconcerned about it.  (Theologian Daniel Helminiak, What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality, April 2000, p.132-133)

[ii] Notice that in this text Paul expresses a patriarchal point of view.  The issue is “the sexual satisfaction of men.”  Men decide.  Love has nothing to do with it.  Exclusive commitment has nothing to do with it.  Men get their sexual needs met as best pleases them.

[iii] The NRSV translates the Greek as “male prostitutes and sodomites.” The KJV has “nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind”—quite a different translation.   The NIV translates: “nor men who have sex with men” and the footnotes says, “The words men who have sex with men translate two Greek words that refer to the passive and active participants in homosexual acts.”

What one discovers here is that the Greek text is very difficult to translate and that none of the English translations can be seen as definitive.  Consider, for example, the first Greek word=malakoi:

This common Greek word had different connotations depending on the context in which it was used. In terms of morality, it generally referred to something like laziness, degeneracy, decadence, or lack of courage. The connotation was of being “soft like a woman” or like the delicate expensive fabrics worn by rich men.

In the patriarchal culture of the time, women were thought to be weaker than men, more fearful, more vulnerable, and more vain. Thus, men who ate too much, liked expensive things, were lazy, or liked to dress well were considered “soft like a woman.” Although this type of misogynistic thinking is intolerable in our modern society, it was common in ancient times and explains why the King James Version translated malakoi as “effeminate.”

But it is important to understand the difference between ancient and modern notions of what makes one effeminate. Paul wasn’t condemning men who swish and carry purses; he was condemning a type of moral weakness. The ancient Roman and Greek understanding of what it meant to be manly or womanly was quite different from today. First-century Romans didn’t think of effeminacy as merely a homosexual trait. In that culture, any man who was more interested in pleasure than in duty was considered to be woman-like [i.e.“soft”].

To examine the remainder of this article, go to Jeff Minor, The Children are Free, pp. 16-18.  (http://wouldjesusdiscriminate.org/biblical_evidence/no_fems_no_fairies.html)

[iv] Most biblical scholars are persuaded that Paul was a witness to the temple prostitution in Corinth.  More recently, however, scholars have questioned this assumption.  Why so?  (a) Only a few ancient sources speak of how sacred prostitution functioned in the cult of Aphrodite.  (b) Corinth as a Greek city-state was completely destroyed by the Romans, and it was restored in 44 BCE by Julius Caesar as a Roman colony.  (c) Paul never once mentions the Temple of Aphrodite (compare with Acts 19).  Thus Paul’s tirade against idolatry as inevitably leading to shameful “unnatural” sex may have been a standard line of argumentation learned during his Pharisaical training and have nothing to do with the decadence he observed among the worshippers of Aphrodite in Corinth.  See Tony Perrottet, “Ancient Greek Temples of Sex” (https://thesmartset.com/article11210701/) & “Holy Hookers and Historical Myths” (http://thethirstygargoyle.blogspot.com/2011/07/holy-hookers-and-historical-myths.html).

One must also remember that cultic prostitution was commonly practiced by the ancient Near Eastern fertility religions and that, from the moment they entered into the Promised Land, the Israelites struggled to avoid such practices (Num 25:1-9, Jdg 2:17-19). This became especially prevalent beginning with the monarchy of Rehoboam (1 Kgs 14:24) and extending to the monarchy of Josiah (2 Kgs 23:7).  According to Exod 34:11-16 the practice of exterminating conquered tribes was necessitated in order to wipe out cultic prostitution.  During the Deteronomic reform, the Law of Moses was expanded specifically to forbid cultic prostitution for Israelites (Deut 23:16-17, Amos 2:7).

Jeffrey H. Tigay, Emeritus A.M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, disagrees: “It is questionable whether cultic prostitution existed at all in the ancient Near East” (http://www.kjvtoday.com/home/sodomite-or-cult-prostitute-deuteronomy-2317-et-al).

[v] In today’s society, Christians have the nasty habit of linking atheism with the absence of moral norms.  This is a stereotype, to be sure.  I am currently living in Shanghai, China.  The Chinese are 98% atheists, yet, in day to day contacts, they practice an exemplary morality.  We never lock our doors here.  In the marketplace, I often pay for groceries by extending my hand filled with a bunch of coins and allow the merchant to select the correct amount.  I feel secure when travelling in dark alleys in the middle of the night.  When I tripped and fell on my face, complete strangers immediately came to my assistance.

Paul, in his day, was operating out of Jewish stereotypes that linked idolatry with homosexuality.  For a study of these Jewish stereotypes and for an understanding of how name-calling was used in rhetorical arguments, see Jeremy Punt, “Religion, sex and politics: Scripting connections in Romans 1:18-32 and Wisdom 14:12-14,” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies, 73 (2017) n.4 (http://www.scielo.org.za/
scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222017000400021).

[vi] Dale B. Martin, “Heterosexism and the Interpretation of Romans 1:18-32,”  Biblical Interpretation, 3/3 (1995)  332 – 355.

Modern interpreters, influenced more by particularly modern forms of heterosexism and its construction of homosexuality, desire, and “nature” than by a straightforward historical-critical reading of Paul’s letter, portray Paul as referring to the “Fall” of Genesis 1-3 in Romans 1. Paul, it is assumed, takes homosexuality to be a sign of “humanity’s fallen state.” These interpreters, therefore, inscribe homosexual desire into universal fallen humanity in a way that Paul does not do. For one thing, Paul is referring not to the Fall in Romans 1 but to the invention of idolatry and polytheism by the Gentiles; homosexual intercourse is therefore not a symptom of “the Fall” but of Gentile polytheism.

“When seeking a biblical justification for opposing homosexual behavior, many people turn to Romans 1:26-27, but John Piper argues that one cannot separate these verses from Paul’s argument about idolatry in verses 18-25” (http://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/2012/september-online-only/ur-video-piper-homosexuality-and-idolatry.html). “Idolatry and shrine prostitution, not homosexuality and lesbianism, are primarily what Paul addressed in Romans 1” (http://www.gaychristian101.com/Romans-1-And-Homosexuality.html).  See also n. 36.